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But what if I want a faster horse?
441–450 of 632 posts
Re: But what if I want a faster horse?
#442Earlier quoted context omitted.
And tragically most users prefer the auto playing previews. Theprimeagean has a YouTube video about how he tried to a/b test it before release thinking "no way that's what users would prefer" and was unfortunately wrong.
Well, there is a setting to turn it off.
My problem with turning it of is that if you _do_ want to watch the preview it's very cumbersome. Clicking on it goes to the movie/episode. So to get to the preview you have to go to the list of Episodes, scroll down (and try not to get spoiled) to trailers then play it. So I have one profile with it on and one with it off, depending on if I'm browsing or not.
Re: But what if I want a faster horse?
#443For any given thing or category of thing , a tiny minority of the human population will be enthusiasts of that thing , but those enthusiasts will have an outsize effect in determining everyone else's taste for that thing . For example, very few people have any real interest in driving a car at 200 MPH, but Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Porsches are widely understood as desirable cars, because the people who are into car…
I think the second paragraph in the parent comment fits really well with mimetic theory and this René Girard quote: "Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires." This, however, doesn't mean that the current Netflix solution is the only one possible.
Re: But what if I want a faster horse?
#444[dead]
Re: But what if I want a faster horse?
#445Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Shoving content into the faces of an indiscriminating userbase" maximizes eyeball time which maximizes ad dollars I mean that's not really the case for paid services without ads like Netflix. They lose money the more you watch. Ideally you'd continue to pay for the subscription but never watch anything.
> Ideally you'd continue to pay for the subscription but never watch anything. I think that’s Netflix’s actual goal: deliver nothing anyone wants to watch, but keep on promising the possibility of something one might want to watch in the future. Which reminds me, we really need to cancel our subscriptions.
Netflix is big and surely not monolithic so there may indeed be some people or even departments that think that way, but the content production is not thinking that way. They genuinely want to create amazing content that is compelling. There is also the very real need to have their own content as well now that the networks are selling streaming services themselves and damn near everything is now exclusive to whatever streaming service
Re: But what if I want a faster horse?
#446https://youtu.be/vQDhzbTz-9k
Not quite the point of the article, but Kawasaki recently announced the Coreleo, a (faster?) robot horse you can ride and holy shit I want one. No chance this thing sees the light of day, and the video is a CGI render, but oh man.
Re: But what if I want a faster horse?
#447If you want faster horses, breed your own horses.
Ford wasn't interested in either your horse, or your transportation need. Ford was interested in what you'd buy. That means when there was ample competition, you'd likely get something that very much felt like a faster horse, because... you did want to go faster than your existing horse, and you didn't care the new thing wasn't horse-shaped.
Fast-forward until meaningful local competition is gone, and you get the F150, the Bronco, and the Mustang. It isn't really what you want (for most people, I know some of you love yours, moving on), but given the other choices, general availability, and popular sentiment, it's close enough that enough people will say, "OK, fine, definitely not a horse any more, but still sorta works for me."
You'll get bland pablum that's smeared out across the average opinion of a sufficient amount of people while maximizing total profit under the curve. That's the logical outcome of any mass production.
IOW: If you care about what you need, support open source authors. Write open source. And be prepared to tinker to tailor it to your needs. Horses are individual, and need care and support more than your car does.
Re: But what if I want a faster horse?
#448With LLMs the ability to create your own experience whilst using services as "databases" is really possible.
My crazy though is that this is where the internet will go.
One of the big problems with SaaS is that the apps are tuned to increase company profit - not user agency.
All that will flip. Agents are the first barrage in that direction but the movement is only just starting.
One barrier is configuration (code at scale) - ie a way to communicate exactly what you want.
Once we have that we compile from our needs (configuration) to an app thats exactly what we want backed by our accounts on amazon, uber, google, openai as databases and processing.
Re: But what if I want a faster horse?
#449The TikTok-ification of advertising supported platforms is terrible, but makes sense to me. LinkedIn pivoted from making money on subscriptions and fees for job postings to ads, which mean the leading drivers are 'engagement' e.g. time you spend doom scrolling on their platform. This will end in disaster for the platform as a place to find jobs or employees. Netflix I understand much less. They make money from subscr…
The thing about the situation is, now that when Tik-tok-ification has grown big enough, it (no-choice interfaces, "enshitification", etc) becomes the only paradigm UI designers, managers and investors understand. Moreover, it's interface that essentially completely controls the user - all the choices they have are essentially fake and control always appeals to managers and control may not immediately make money but it can make money long term so it can be justified.
You can see how Sonos enshitified their interface and even with a user rebellion wouldn't back down, just as an example.
Re: But what if I want a faster horse?
#450For any given thing or category of thing , a tiny minority of the human population will be enthusiasts of that thing , but those enthusiasts will have an outsize effect in determining everyone else's taste for that thing . For example, very few people have any real interest in driving a car at 200 MPH, but Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Porsches are widely understood as desirable cars, because the people who are into car…
> Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Porsches For street usage, I think those cars are popular because they’re beautiful more than because they’re fast (or because enthusiasts like them). My utterly soulless Lexus will drive more than fast enough to get me in serious trouble. No one will look at it and feel stirred by its beauty, whereas the typical Ferrari or Porsche coupe will look at least appealing to most and beautiful…
It always surprises me how quickly people forget nuance.
OK so we're discussing niche vs mainstream, or "what most people want" vs "what a few want".
The few cars you listed are not popular in the ownership sense, but they are well-known and aspirational.
People can buy them to show off status / money / exclusivity, or perhaps beauty. Speed is table stakes, of course. They have to objectively be better than most cars but also special. They can be strikingly beautiful or strikingly hideous but they must not be ordinary.
If you watch / read reviews of those cars, then it tends to be from the enthusiast driver point of view. Is it good at racing, cornering, reading the driver's intentions and reacting instantly and accurately? But then more often than not, those that can afford them do not buy them to use them for that purpose (or at least not frequently.) Many are treated a bit like investments or merely items in a collection.
What a long-winded way to get back to the original point of faster horses and enshittification of software, eh?
Netflix and Spotify might as well be a Toyota Corolla or Prius. I lost my train of thought. I think I just wanted to pontificate about exotic cars for a while.
(I drive a Polestar 2. It looks like a Volvo, is heavy as a dump truck, but damn is it fast as hell.)